Articles by Diana Beechener

Retired super villain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell: The Office) is a great dad to his three adopted daughters. But he isn’t very good at life on the side of right.
Plus he has to figure out what to do with his evil scientist partner and scores of odd yellow minions.
...

Special agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) is good at her job. She’s a wealth of information, always on top of her investigations and can find stashed drugs faster than the K-9 unit. Unfortunately, what Ashburn boasts in brains she lacks in people skills. Half of the FBI wants her to fail; the other half avoids her.
...

Since he was just a tiny green eyeball, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal: Parental Guidance) has dreamed of being a scarer. In Monstropolis, scarers are rock stars. They sneak into human children’s bedrooms at night — via an enchanted closet door — to frighten them. The screams of kids make the electricity that runs the monster world.
...

Krypton’s advanced society is about to go extinct, doomed by bad environmental choices. As the planet falls apart, Jor-El (Russell Crowe: Broken City) and his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer: Touch) conclude the only hope for the people of Krypton is sending their son Kal to a new world with the genetic information of every one of the planet’s citizens....

What could have been an interesting political satire or a subversive black comedy is instead a dreadfully dull horror movie laden with stereotypes

In 2022, the American government has come up with a solution for crime: The Purge. Once every year, for 12 hours, all crime is legal. You can murder, rape, assault and rob to your heart’s content and get a free pass. Government officials are protected, emergency services are shut down and the rest of the country lets it rip.
...

A friendly charity match turned into a beating around the bottom of the fourth inning. The June 1 NFL vs. Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team game drew crowds from nearby military bases and football fans from far and wide.
...

Four magicians, drawn together by a mysterious puppet master, team up to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Think Robin Hood with flash paper and sequins. As if pillaging the bank accounts of the one-percent isn’t hard enough, the illusionists must evade the pernicious attention of an FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo: Iron Man 3) tasked with lowering the curtain on this charitable crime spree.
...

Are stunning visuals enough to conceal the plot holes in this animated tale of good vs. evil?

Teenager M.K. (Amanda Seyfried: The Big Wedding) is forced to move back in with her father (Jason Sudeikis: Movie 43) after the death of her mother. A veritable stranger to her, Dad is far more interested in tiny people who he believes live in the forest than in his mourning child.
Dear old dad might not be as crazy as M.K. believes.
...

The beloved franchise trades Sci-Fi for action in this bombastic sequel

After a routine mission goes awry, the Enterprise is called back to Earth and cavalier captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine: Rise of the Guardians) is demoted for his disregard of the Prime Directive. Kirk’s disciplining is put on hold, however, when terrorist John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch: The Hobbit) brings Star Fleet to its knees.
...

When soldier Saul Bosquez lost his left leg below the knee during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007, he discovered his game was not finished, just delayed.
“My great grandpa lost fingers in a tractor accident, but I didn’t know anyone that had been injured like I had,” Bosquez told Bay Weekly.
...